March 30, 2016

Kevin Roberts Doesn't Like Me

I guess I must be doing something right.

Kevin Roberts, Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, wrote a nasty blog post about me last week. With the possible exception of Sir Martin Sorrell, there is probably no one in advertising I would rather have dislike me than Kevin Roberts.

Roberts is one of the all-time champion brand babblers. He was apparently upset by an article in Business Insider about a talk I gave in London last month in which I said:

"Creating a strong brand should be every marketer’s primary objective
and the highest role of advertising is to create a strong brand. But our
industry has taken these truths and twisted them into silly fantasies... There’s a widespread belief in our business that
consumers are in love with brands. That consumers want to have brand
experiences and brand relationships and be personally engaged with
brands and read branded story telling. People...have a lot of things to care deeply about. It’s very unwise to believe
that they care deeply about our batteries, our wet wipes and our chicken
strips."

Here's what Roberts wrote in response:

"The radically optimistic reality check is that people have dreams, hopes
and aspirations. They strive for magic moments in life amidst the dross
and struggle, believe in a better future, and ways to make life more
valuable, easier, and enjoyable. Products and brands have a vitally
important role in helping people navigate their daily lives, bringing
ongoing moments of convenience, utility and joy."

Do you want to just kill yourself, or what?

But you have to admit it -- this guy is good. I can see dimwit CMOs slurping up this bullshit with both hands.

I have written about Roberts and his hoary horseshit before. You can find it here and here.

Roberts is the guy who came up with the quintessence of insufferable brand babble: Love Marks...

“They reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can't live without.”

Someone pass the Kleenex.

I know these pompous aristocrats hate facts but, just for the record, Havas Media did a study on this stuff. They found that in the US and Europe people would not care if 92% of brands disappeared.

Well, anyway, it turns out that ol' Kev ain't having much success with his blog. I checked his last 25 blog posts and there is not a single comment on any of them. Not one.

"Caustic Yet Truthful"

"The Most provocative Man In Advertising"

"Savage Critiques Of Digital Hype"

"Fabulously Irreverent"

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Creative people make the ads. Everyone else makes the arrangements."

"Delusional thinking isn't just acceptable in marketing today -- it's mandatory.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business is about sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."